Search results

We investigated the reciprocal relationship between parent–adolescent communication and adolescents' self-esteem with a sample of 296 Chinese junior middle school students over a course of approximately 3 months, using an autoregressive cross-lagged model. The results showed
that both parent–adolescent communication and adolescent self-esteem had invariant autoregressive effects over the 3 months. In addition, parent–adolescent communication had a significant crosslagged effect on adolescent self-esteem and vice versa, indicating reciprocal effects
between parent–adolescent communication and adolescent self-esteem over time. Our findings suggest that multilevel intervention incorporating individual counseling and family intervention is more effective in improving parent–adolescent communication and adolescent self-esteem
than either individual counseling or family intervention alone.

Previous studies have revealed the effect of locus of control on academic engagement and achievement motivation, but the role that achievement motivation plays in the relationship between the other two variables for Chinese adolescents has remained unclear. We conducted two studies
to explore this issue. In Study 1 we used standardized scales to measure locus of control (Internal–External Control Scale), academic engagement (Utrecht Work Engagement Scale–Student), and achievement motivation (Achievement Motivation Scale) among 1,811 middle school students.
In Study 2 we intervened in the participants' achievement motivation by way of group counseling to further check the effect on their academic engagement. We randomly recruited 64 students from the same school for control and experimental groups and constructed a relationship model among the
three variables of locus of control, academic engagement, and achievement motivation. Results demonstrated that intervention in achievement motivation can effectively enhance the academic engagement of middle school students.